New Life - UCOA Moment for May 21st, 2008 I have a new grandson. He was born last thursday evening, his name is Corbin, which reminds me of Bruce Willis' character Corbin Dallas in the movie The 5th Element. I don't know if he will grow up to be quite as adventurous as Bruce was in that movie, but Corbin is definitely a good name for a future biker. Now all I have to do is convince his mother that it's safe to ride with me. Maybe in a few years.

The arrival of new life is always exciting, but it is also a little scary, considering the wars and rumors of wars that plague our planet. Can we protect the littlest members of our society from such things? I don't know, but I do know that we have to try our best, and part of that best, is training them up to be men and women of their word, respecting their elders and respecting each other. The Bible goes even further, telling us to love each other as we love ourselves. Loving others is not a small thing, and it's not a suggestion. It was given as a command. Love God, and Love each other. Where am I going to get the power to do that? I think you can guess.

Tom

  ¶ 6:54 PM 0 comments

  COC State Rally
Well, the COC (Confederation Of Clubs) had their Texas State Rally this past weekend. I think most had a great time, though it was punctuated with some serious rain and lots of mud. Debbie and I participated Friday evening in the (first) rain event, but we decided to go home before the second event Saturday night. You can click on any picture for a larger version, or click the title above for a video:











  ¶ 7:32 AM 0 comments

  A GREAT DAY I had a great day yesterday. It wasn't so different from most of my days, and in some ways there were reasons that it shouldn't have been good at all. I woke up as usual, felt like crap, for reasons we won't go into, and then I worked my butt off, pretty much all day. It probably sounds familiar to many of you, though you may have different details, the results are usually the same. You get home in the evening, and you are exhausted, and you just want to crash. There were however, two things that were different about my day yesterday. First, I made (found, discovered, happened to have) time in the morning to spend time in prayer, and with God's word. Now I can hear you already saying "Well gosh Tom, don't you do that everyday?", and the answer is mostly yes, but I have been struggling lately to to "find" the time, and have been often taking it to work, where I try to take some time at the start of the day. Unfortunately it doesn't really work very well, work is just too busy. Second, at the end of an exhausting day, I went to an event at Great Hills Baptist Church to hear Eldon Wright speak about, and to hear directly (through a video) how Evel Knievel came to Salvation in Jesus Christ. Mr. Wright was a good friend of Evel, and witnessed to him in the 1970's, then after 30 years of living separate lives, Evel called him up and wanted to know more about this Jesus that Eldon had spoken of. Eldon was privileged to lead Evel to Christ last year, shortly before Evel pass away. Evel's testimony was broadcast from the Crystal Cathedral, and is now available for viewing on youtube. It was truly inspirational. If you want to see for yourself, you can just read the next entry below, and click on the links.

It was a great day, Indeed!

Tom Zimmer  ¶ 6:52 AM 0 comments

  Bike Night at Great Hills Baptist Church We had a great dinner, and met the man, Eldon Wright, who was blessed to lead Evel Knievel to Christ last year, shortly before Evel's death from lung failure. The program started with a BBQ dinner catered by Southside BBQ of Elgin TX. We then got to see a video about Evel, and a slide show with commentary by Eldon. We also viewed Evel's testimony as given at the Crystal Cahedral, to which I can only say wow! You can see the testimony video by clicking on the title above, or the links below:
Evel's Testimony short
Evel's Testimony full

Labels: Evel Knievel Jesus Eldon Wright

  ¶ 9:41 PM 0 comments

  Too Busy - UCOA message for April 16th, 2008 Is your life as full as mine? Do you have so many things to do, that you can never get to them all? Am I the only one that feels this way, or are you in the same boat, feeling the same pressures, running in the same circles? Within the past week, I have spent $500 on service on my motorcycle, $1400 on the brakes of my car, I am about to spend over $1000 on transmission repair on my wife's car, and I still have to spend another $1000 on my car to get it to quit leaking coolant. Why do all of my vehicles need to breakdown at the same time? Why does God allow all these pressures at the same time? What is He trying to teach me? Is it that He doesn't want me to think I have it all under control? Well, then I get the message. Or perhaps He knows that there are some of you that are feeling the same way, and He wants me to be able to understand what you are going through. I am sure you know that I don't think God causes these things to happen, but He does allow them. I think what God really wants, is simply to remind us that He is always there in the midst of our difficulty, and that we need only turn to Him in prayer for some much needed peace. He is always available, we only need to look up!

Tom Zimmer  ¶ 9:05 PM 0 comments

  Doug and Linda Got Married! Doug and Linda got married at the Jonestown Baptist Sunday. Debbie and I took some pictures, and here are a couple of good ones. Click on a picture for a larger version.

  ¶ 9:15 PM 0 comments

  I came across these while cleaning I was cleaning off a shelf, and I came across these photo copies of a newspaper article about our CMA Bike Blessing that took place at Jones Brothers Park in Jonestown TX in May 2004. I thought they were pretty neat, so I scanned them in for greater exposure.



This last photo is from the same event, taken with my camera. It is probably easier to recognize the people in this one.
Click any photo for a larger image.

  ¶ 3:57 PM 0 comments

  Honor ride for the Veterans Moving Wall in Georgetown Texas I and about 50 of my biker friends rode up to Georgetown, to the Veterans Moving Wall display and ceremony at San Gabriel Park. The ceremony was great, and at the end, many veterans rode past the wall to honor our veterans. You can click on the title to see the video of the event, and here are a few of the photos I took;



  ¶ 6:02 PM 0 comments

  Who is your Backup? Here I sit, freeer now than I was a couple of days ago. The trauma is over, and almost forgotten. We all seem to collect stuff, and I collect as much as anyone, probably more. You see, I used to have a computer, that held all my photos, home movies, emails, etc, etc, etc. All this stuff. Now a lot of this stuff is very useful (helpful?) to have around, I had pictures and home videos going back to the mid '90s. Some pretty valuable stuff to me. Well, as you have probably guessed, a crash caused much of it to go away. Now I can hear you saying, that it serves me right, if I didn't have it backed up. Problem is, I did have a backup, a full current backup that was working perfectly. Then one day, the main, and the backup both crashed at the same time. I was doing my duty, trusting in my backup, and believing that two separate hard-drives would not both die at the same time. Well I am here to tell you that it can happen, it happened to me. Of course there is a longer story behind all this, but my point for today, is "Where are you placing your trust?". Are you trusting your backup, and is that backup trustworthy? Mine apparently wasn't. You can think of a backup like an old friend who is always there when you need him or her. As a Christian, I have a backup who is always there when I need Him. He is completely trustworthy, and will never fail me. In fact, as I look back a the circumstances that surrounded the crash, I think God may have been telling me that it was time to get rid of some stuff, some stuff that was just hanging around, stuff that I didn't really need. I do feel a lot freeer now. Who Is your backup?

Tom Zimmer

P.S. Technical background: I had two 1TB (Terra-Byte) drives in external enclosures, sitting at comfortable room temperature, that had been running without error for the past 8 months. When I turned them off to do some maintenance on another part of my system, they wouldn't come up again. Six hours of recovery effort later, I did manage to get my email back, a few (very few) of my home videos, about 70 percent of my music library and a few documents. Lets say I recovered maybe 20 GB from a drive that had about 700GB on it. The backup never gave another whimper, and the primary became progressively worse, until it was impossible to get anything else off of it. The good news, is that I had (for other reasons) done a second backup of my photos, which is now at about 55GB consisting of over 24,000 photographs. I got back what I "needed", and I lost what I didn't really need. Free indeed!  ¶ 7:22 AM 1 comments

  Out of Control - UCOA Message for March 12th 2008 Here I sit, at 2AM, thinking about how out of control my life is. If you are at all like me, there are lots of things about your life that you would change if you thought you could. You know, like, less stress in the job, more money in the pocket, or a car that didn't breakdown every week at just the wrong time, and on and on.  Of course there are good things in my life too, but the irritating bad things seem to keep popping up and screaming at me.  Sometimes I feel like I'm just a small cog in a big machine, going around and around with an ever louder squeak, getting hotter and hotter.  Wishing for something to make things run more smoothly.  Being a Christian of course, I have the guy with the oil can in the sky.  I only need to ask for some help in cooling things down.  I just wish He would smooth things out, without me having to ask all the time.  I think my biggest problem, is that I have trouble accepting what He has already told me, that  "All thing work together for the good, for those who love God".   If that is true, then even the popping up and screaming things are for my own good.  Maybe I don't have to like it, maybe I just need to keep asking for help.  Maybe He wants me to remember that I am not in control, and  that He is, and that all thing are working together, even when I can't see it.  ¶ 2:55 AM 0 comments